Sheri7
Posts 1
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Hi there. I just joined tonight because I have several challenging students in my grade 4 class. I have 22 students in total: about half would be considered a "dream class" because they are internally motivated, helpful, hardworking and focused. I also have 7 who would be considered very challenging for a variety of reasons (distracted, disruptive, defiant, frequent fights, frequent meltdowns, etc.) The others are fairly "typical" kids in that they misbehave occasionally, but are easily redirected and the usual positive/negative reinforcement stuff works with them quite well.
I try very hard to take kids aside and help them through their challenges, but 9 times out of 10 if I am talking with one challenging child, 2 or 3 others are stirring up trouble while I'm doing it. I try to stand in the doorway of my classroom with the door open so I can see in, but I can still provide privacy for the student I'm talking to. During this time, I have these more challenging kids out of their seats, yelling across the room, getting in to fights with others and sometimes having full meltdowns in which things get thrown and people get hurt. I've had at least 3 parents of the well-behaved kids express concerns about the behaviour in the class and how much learning is happening in the class, and to be honest I can't say I blame them. Although the behaviour has improved tremendously since the start of the year, it's still not an environment that promotes learning. I've been teaching for 10 years and I've never had a class that was this far off track before. I've had challenging students before, but never more than 2 or 3 at once, and never THIS challenging.
In addition to this, I have a group of extremely low achieving students. I want desperately to be able to help those kids with their reading and math, but I spend so much time dealing with misbehaviour that I never have that time to correct misconceptions or work one on one or even in small groups to help them.
I would love to try collaborative problem solving with these difficult kids, but I don't know how to structure things so that I can work with them AND teach the class, too. Any/all advice is welcome.
Thanks.
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Allan
Posts 166
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Hi,
I hear that it is a grade 4 class , 22 kids , 7 challenging , 10 = dream class -I am not sure about your comment - a group of low achieving students
In order to work with individual kids I think we need help from the better kids who can be peer mentors in the class. I would try and divide the class into groups , so we have at least 2 stronger kids to 1 challenging child. maybe 4-5 groups , you know them better. When there is group learning , kids are more engaged and the better kids take responsibility for the kids who are struggling.
CPS in the classroom - I would prepare a thinking skills inventory for each kid - the lagging skills and examples/problems that need to be solved, then prioritize the kids
time - before school , recess, after school , get a teacher to take your class and during this time work with the kid.
help from others in your building - the interactions mainly take place in your class , so you are the main player , but maybe the school psychologist or counselor can be brought in the picture and maybe she could do some plan B with these kids. You would need to educate others about cps .
Cps should be done slowly - getting the child's concerns on the table - should be realy slow - we don't need to go through all the steps in one session
I will private mail you as well
Allan
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